Wow! That was incredible. Dickinson upends fantasy tropes in this deadly and intricate novel of intrigue, economic warfare, and horrific revenge. Young Baru Cormorant is a child who sees her carefree home captured by invisible threads of paper currency, ill-advised alliances, and well-meaning advisers, an invasion that moves with the unstoppable momentum of a glacier until the imperial power of the Masquerade rules everything, crushing her people's traditions and culture under eugenic science and hygienic advisers. A student in the new Imperial school, Baru formulates a risky plan. She will become the best, use her talents to gain power within the Masquerade, and then destroy it from within.

A prodigy with accounting and finance, Baru is dispatched to the strategic province of Aurdwynn, to fill the shoes of two dead men in a viper's pit of feuding dukes, venomous Imperial functionaries, ancient cults, and ambitious peasants. Baru needs to find her allies, and sparks a rebellion in her own name against the Empire, winning a major battle and playing off hard fraught loyalties. She's an amazing protagonist, a tightly wound demon who's deeply internalized anger is all too real.

I refuse to say anything about the end, but again, Wow! This is a book that will spike you through the heart. Best fantasy I've read all year.

***

Updated from 2019: I reread Traitor because I started Monster and the beginning of Monster made no damn sense. On a reread, Traitor is even better. Sure, knowing the end removes the absolute gut punch, but the journey is still incredible, it's easier to keep track of the secondary characters, and I really enjoyed Dickinson's pacing, the way that he sticks through years without missing anything important.